Nate Soares joins me to discuss the race to superintelligent AI, why alignment remains unsolved and why he believes building machines smarter than humanity could end in catastrophe.
Nate explains why modern AI is not programmed like traditional software, but grown through training processes we do not fully understand. We discuss AI escaping labs, recursive self-improvement, why today’s systems are only safe because they are not yet powerful enough to take over and why the danger may not be that AI hates us, but that it does not care about us at all.
We also get into OpenAI, Anthropic, Google DeepMind, xAI - the AI companies racing ahead despite the risks, why “turning it off” may not be possible, the case for an international treaty against superintelligence, and why Nate believes we should not give up before the driver wakes up.
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TIMESTAMPS:
00:00:00 - AI That Doesn’t Care About Us
00:01:04 - If Anyone Builds This, Everyone Dies
00:04:17 - If He’s Right, We Lose Everything
00:07:28 - Why Nate Isn’t Anti-AI
00:08:32 - From Google and DeepMind to AI Risk
00:11:00 - Why Can’t We Make AI Care About Us?
00:16:07 - We Can Look Inside, But We Don’t Understand It
00:17:20 - The Moment Nate Decided to Write the Book
00:20:24 - The Senator Who Already Understood the Risk
00:24:04 - How AI Goes From Useful to Terrifying
00:32:17 - Could AI Live on a Portable Drive?
00:36:13 - Are the AI CEOs Listening?
00:39:53 - Why Would We Accept a 10% Risk?
00:43:40 - Conor’s Point: We Don’t Get a Choice
00:51:10 - Are We Already Racing Towards the Cliff?
00:58:28 - The AI That Threatened a Reporter
01:15:53 - What Would Winning Look Like?
01:21:38 - What Can Ordinary People Do?
01:26:31 - Are We Just a Simulation for AI?
01:34:26 - Don’t Give Up Before the Driver Wakes Up
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CONTACT PETE
› Website – http://petermccormack.com
› Feedback – https://www.petermccormack.com/contact
› Email – me@petermccormack.com
› Instagram – /mccormack555
› X/Twitter – https://x.com/petermccormack/
CONNECT WITH NATE SOARES
› Website – https://intelligence.org/
› Book – https://ifanyonebuildsit.com/
› X/Twitter – https://x.com/So8res
SPONSORS
› IREN - https://www.iren.com/
› Plaud - https://www.plaud.ai/mccormack
› Incogni - https://incogni.com/peter
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LISTEN / SUBSCRIBE
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FILMED BY CURTIS TAYLOR
› https://www.curttaylor.co.uk/
EDITED BY CONOR MCCORMACK
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